"Only Death is Real"...Really?

"...death, the rupture of the discontinuous individualities to which we cleave in terror, stands there before us more real than life itself."

Georges Bataille

I don't see how that is necessary. I'd be game, though, to the idea that the discontinuity is realer than our lives as we know them. I.e., my individuality is imputed upon a collection of sense experiences, appearing as "I"-ness through a trick of consciousness.

" 'Only Death is Real' conveyed ego-death: no matter how big you think you are or how important, death is more real than your visions, so you must accept nothingness."

Notably, "To see only death as real is to wonder what else can be real. The answer is right past the end of our noses: the world is real, and it's a continuum that renews itself, so it's worth working for" [emphasis mine].

"...death, the rupture of the discontinuous individualities to which we cleave in terror, stands there before us more real than life itself."

Georges Bataille

I don't see how that is necessary. I'd be game, though, to the idea that the discontinuity is realer than our lives as we know them. I.e., my individuality is imputed upon a collection of sense experiences, appearing as "I"-ness through a trick of consciousness.

" 'Only Death is Real' conveyed ego-death: no matter how big you think you are or how important, death is more real than your visions, so you must accept nothingness."

Notably, "To see only death as real is to wonder what else can be real. The answer is right past the end of our noses: the world is real, and it's a continuum that renews itself, so it's worth working for" [emphasis mine].

So, only death and the world is real!

This really seems to me like much ado about nothing. Only ice-cream is real. Let's discuss how that is a logical inversion of the post-modernist altered mechanics of dadaism now.

It's the question the unborn child could ask before leaving mother's womb.

You kind of dodged the question there, didn't you? I mean, a metaphor without some kind of context is not very helpful. If you see death as a passageway, then you must have some idea of where it leads, so to speak. Otherwise, you wouldn't see it as such. It'd just be a demarcation or something.

Considering the Celtic concept of the "Otherworld", in which this mortal realm is a realm of sickness, aging, and general suffering, and the Otherworld, the Land of the Dead, is a land of happiness, youthfulness, and sunlight, it might be plausible to consider "Only Death is Real" to mean "Life begins after Death".

It's the question the unborn child could ask before leaving mother's womb.

You kind of dodged the question there, didn't you? I mean, a metaphor without some kind of context is not very helpful. If you see death as a passageway, then you must have some idea of where it leads, so to speak. Otherwise, you wouldn't see it as such. It'd just be a demarcation or something.

It's the question the unborn child could ask before leaving mother's womb.

You kind of dodged the question there, didn't you? I mean, a metaphor without some kind of context is not very helpful. If you see death as a passageway, then you must have some idea of where it leads, so to speak. Otherwise, you wouldn't see it as such. It'd just be a demarcation or something.

This is the simplest, and absolutely correct interpretation of "Only Death is Real." Death is the ultimate nothingness of Brain Reality, human consciousness, that leads to an eternity of unknown existence afterwards. I am unsure of what the implications of our reality are to the universe, or what the universe even is considering my knowledge, i.e., Brain Reality of it.

I was referring to the general division of the ancient states in two archetypes: solar and lunar. The predominantly solar Empire existed in order to maximize the amount of transcendence and it's projection on the matter, while the matriarchal community is regarded as degenerated from the solar order because of it's fatalistic spirituality, which was reflected in it's inevitable capitulation to Empire. Of course, with time the Empire degenerates and crumbles while the telluric attributes of the conquered race rise again from the Black Mother Isis.

The different experience of death in these two cultures is best observed in their funeral rites. In solar cultures, the carcass is ignited to evaporate beyond matter, while the telluric proto-communists fertilize the Womb for the rebirth. While that doesn't imply a lack of spirituality (sometimes it was very developed), it shows a degradation regarding the focus shift from the immovable Principle to the miracle of incarnation.

Solar religion is a set of techniques for cremating what is not Principle, divided in two chapters. Through the lesser mysteries one achieves absolute mental hygiene and through higher the absolute participation in the Principle, at least Buddha said so. The Telluric (and it's subtle sister Lunar) religion goes no further than the lesser (Orphic, Eleusinian, Pythagorean) mysteries. In modern times, it's manifested in psychoanalysis: the underworld in which a freudian combats the demons of his subconsciousness is simply to be cremated through yoga, for example. So it's also a question of the approach to the lesser mysteries, but mainly the question of the barrier.

Modern people have lost most of the access even to the lesser mysteries, but they still know sacred. A dollar bill is haunted by a spook which causes one to observe differently the burning of goods worth 1$ and the actual bill disintegrating, aside any criminal implication. The dollar spook is different from the yen spook and so on.. That's one aspect of the Mater worship megacult, focused on the lowest common denominator, manifested as Janus of communism/capitalism. Without a force organizing humanity in accord with the Principle we are not provided techniques for awakening the possibility of personal action and fall prey to re-action, i.e. the karmic endless circle of rebirth.